


Shapes

by Kahvi



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 13:16:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2230422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rimmer claims to have been rudely awoken by a beautiful alien making love to him, Lister obviously dismisses it as a dream. But three million years away from the nearest woman, it can't hurt to investigate...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shapes

“It’s a garbage-pod,” Rimmer yelled, his voice reverberating around the ship, making the scutters in the corridor below stop in their paths, startled. Lister laughed, sinking to his knees as Rimmer, horrified, cried out once more in frustration; “It’s a smegging garbage-pod!”

But it wasn’t.

Space Corps Biological Engineer Odd Roar Halvorsen was not the most social of people. This, perhaps unavoidably, was mostly due to his rather unfortunate first names, bestowed upon him by well-meaning but misguided parents, who had spotted them in a book of old Scandinavian names, and wanted to pay homage to their heritage. He did not have a happy childhood, and longed for the day when he could move away from Titan and make a name – an entirely different name – for himself somewhere else. He’d signed up to join the Corps at sixteen, which was the youngest age they would accept recruits at, and had worked his way up the ranks as far as he could while studying for his bio-engineering exam. For many, happy years he had gone by the name of “Bill,” which he had always rather liked. Sadly, however, when his exam results arrived, he discovered to his horror that he had done so well that his name – his full, real name – had been broadcast to the entire crew of the “Haley’s Comet,” on which he was stationed, by the ship’s computer.

After that, he had given mostly up on socializing, preferring instead to spend his time in his lab on the newly built bio-tech research-station orbiting Saturn, where he had been employed shortly after leaving the “Haley.” Which, depending on how you looked at it, was either a blessing or the beginnings of a complete and utter disaster.

“Oh, hullo Oddball,” the Commander greeted him cheerfully, as Halvorsen entered his office. Halvorsen didn’t wince. He’d stopped wincing years ago.

“Good morning, Sir,” he mumbled, mulling over a rather difficult equation he’d been working on earlier in his mind.

“Do sit down. Good. Good.” Commander Grayson was a pleasant-looking man somewhere in his early sixties, with a friendly smile, and white hair which was still quite thick. He waited until Halvorsen had taken a seat, then coughed politely. “Now, I wanted to talk to you about those modifications you made to our standard model pleasure-GELF last week.”

“Oh yes?” Eager to talk shop, Halvorsen instantly emerged from the depths of his over-active mind.

“Yes indeed! Now, it seems as though you’ve made quite a radical break-through.” The Commander opened an ornate box on his desk, and turned it towards Halvorsen. “Turkish Delight?”

“No thank you. Yes, marketing asked me to see if there was any room for improvement, and – well, you’ll forgive me for saying so I hope – there was quite a lot to improve on indeed!”

“Quite, quite,” Grayson said, a somewhat worried look creeping into his eyes. “I had the… Pleasure of testing one of the newly hatched prototypes myself last evening.” He adjusted his collar, seeming lost in thought for a moment.

“Oh yes?” Halvorsen asked. “How did it perform? Did the modifications to the genome take? Were they stable?” Each eager question brought him closer to the edge of his seat; his mouth half-open in an expectant grin.

“Oh, stable enough, quite stable.” There was still that distant look on the Commander’s face. Finally, he seemed to snap back to reality. “Tell me,” he asked carefully, “what was the general idea behind giving the model the ability to pick up subconscious wants and needs?”

Halvorsen was more or less out of his seat now, tethering dangerously on the edge, supported only by his heavy, boot-clad feet. “So it worked! And you noticed, Sir? How wonderful!” Realizing that he had been asked a question, he fumbled in the side-pocket of the pant-legs of his overalls for his note-pad, turned it on, and began to read his notes. “Well, it was the natural next step to take, wasn’t it? After all, the standard model reads your mind on a superficial level, so why not design one that went even further; that could really satisfy your secret innermost desires? It was a simple enough adjustment to make in theory; the question was only whether or not it would have any effect once implemented.” He looked up, smiling, “And it did! What extraordinary good luck!”

Commander Grayson coughed politely. “Indeed. However, one cannot help but notice the resemblance of this approach to that of another leisure activity device, can one?” He looked at Halvorsen, expectantly.

Halvorsen frowned. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

The Commander sighed. “Then let me be completely frank with you, Odd. May I call you Odd?”

Halvorsen’s left eyelid started to twitch. “I’d really rather you didn’t,” he mumbled, but the Commander didn’t seem to hear him. Frank, Halvorsen thought, now there’s a good name. I wish my name was Frank.

“The fact of the matter is, Odd, people don’t want their innermost desires revealed, least of all to themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to discover, for example, that you are strongly attracted to your sister-in-law? Can you imagine the embarrassment should a pleasure-GELF transform into your brother’s wife in a situation where your brother might actually see the two of you together? I mean,” he went on, rambling now, “suppose you worked at the same place, and your brother walked in on you when you were enjoying what you’d thought would be a fun distraction during your lunch-break, and sees you with a naked replica of his wife, begging you to ‘bonk her brains out, big boy’?” Grayson was sweating now, his eyes darting nervously from side to side.

“Er…” Halvorsen said, unsure of what he was expected to reply.

“For heaven’s sake man, what were you thinking?” Grayson seemed to be struggling to remain in control of himself, but apparently won his internal battle, and folded his hands gently on the desktop in front of him. “Don’t you remember what happened with ‘Better than Life’? Messing with people’s subconscious has been proven to be a very bad idea indeed!”

Halvorsen looked like a living question mark. “Better than what?”

“Better than Life,” the Commander repeated, “the AR game.” Halvorsen’s face remained a blank. “There were riots in Tokyo; people went insane; some never escaped from the simulation. People died!” Halvorsen looked horrified, but uncomprehending. Grayson sighed. “Look,” he said, “what I’m trying to say is, we can’t bring this thing into production.”

“But…” Halvorsen’s face fell. “Why not?”

“You mean you really haven’t heard of the Better than Life disaster? It was all over the news; everyone talked about it!” Halvorsen just shook his head, sadly. He hadn’t really kept up with news and current events, and as he didn’t socialize, no one had told him. He expected he was in real trouble.

“What are we going to do about it, Sir?” he asked weakly.

Grayson’s face turned grim. “We’re going to have to flush it into space, my boy. Nothing else for it.”

Halvorsen nodded. They couldn’t kill it, of course. According to interplanetary law, GELFs were classified as semi-sentient beings, and thus killing them was more or less equal to murder. Blasting it off into space though, that was different. Pleasure GELFs were tough, able to survive almost anything, including the cold vacuum of space for pretty much indefinite periods of time. Sure, it would probably never be found by anyone, and so was as good as dead, but technically, it was alive. This was an important technicality.

Commander Grayson came around the table and patted him fatherly on the back, mumbling something about needing to get out more, but Halvorsen wasn’t paying attention. All he could think of was how glad he was that he hadn’t mentioned absolutely all the extra features he’d imbued the GELF with in his notes. Most of the traits probably hadn’t taken anyway. And if they had, what difference would it make, in deep space?

Three million and some years later, the chicken carcass lay splattered on the floor next to the garbage pod where Lister had left it. It was ship’s night. Only the Cat was awake, skulking down some corridor, swiping at anything he thought he saw moving. He was far away from here though. Slowly, soundlessly, the carcass stirred, and started sliming its way across the floor, like a grotesque snail. As it reached the pod there was a sickening slurping sound, and a moment later there seemed to be nothing in the room at all. Nothing… Except the indefinite, shadowy shape quickly escaping through the half-open door.

The pleasure GELF was confused. It was very young. It had been given no training, only the basic knowledge-implants needed to communicate with others. It didn’t know where it was. It had disguised itself out of instinct, taking on the shapes of objects it had found around it in space, and had laid low until it had found its bearings. It didn’t know how it had gotten inside this place; all it knew was its purpose: To bring pleasure.

It could sense the minds of the creatures in this place, but only weakly, through the many decks between them and it. One of them was alone, moving quickly. His emotional aura should be too weak to detect at this distance, but that wasn’t the case. The GELF shivered around its near-invisible edges, puzzled. The emotions of the creature were actually completely discernable, but of no interest to it. They were basic, simple emotions, just like the creature’s needs and wants. There was no subconscious to tap into. Turning several different colors in rapid succession, its personal equivalent of frowning, the GELF turned its attention to the other two. Both were asleep, in the same room, their subconscious desires strong, but unclear at this distance. A happy ripple crossed the GELFs surface. Perfect.

Appearing on the wall-screen of the quarantine room, Holly frowned. The pod was gone. Well, that was as it should be, wasn’t it? After all, Arnold had asked him to get rid of it, and there it was, or rather wasn’t. Right then. Except… Holly couldn’t for the life of him remember actually having told the scutters to dispose of the pod. He must have, because it was clearly gone, but he had no memory of it. Funny that. He looked around nervously. He didn’t like these inconsistencies in his memory. There were all too many of them. He’d have to do a deep-scan of his memory stores. He sighed, inwardly. Those bloody scans took forever. With a dissatisfied sneer, he disappeared from the screen.

Something was tickling Rimmer’s nose. It had a fluttery, feathery kind of feel to it. Half-asleep, he twitched his upper lip, his nostrils expanding and contracting rapidly, as though in anticipation of a sneeze. What woke him was not the sensation however, but rather the sudden, chilling realization that nothing should be able to touch him. In a second flat, his eyes opened wide with alarm, but it was far too late…

“Lister!”

Through the heavy curtain of sleep, Lister became vaguely aware of someone trying to yell his name whilst simultaneously whispering. Reluctantly, he forced himself awake. “Wha?”

“Aliens!” In the twilight of the darkened room, Rimmer looked even more crazed than he sounded. “I just had sex with an alien.”

Lister groaned. “Go back to sleep, Rimmer. Ye had a dream.”

“No! I’m telling you; a gorgeous six-breasted green-haired alien woman came in here, woke me up, paralyzed me and had sex with me!” Rimmer’s eyes seemed about to pop out of his skull.

“Without me noticing?”

“Yes! Well… I mean… Didn’t you?”

“No! I’ve been fast asleep. I think I’d’ve noticed if some gorgeous woman just came in here and tried to put the moves on ya.” Lister yawned, and tried to make his eyes focus in the unlit room.

“She didn’t just ‘put the moves’ on me, miladdo, she smegging gave me one!”

“Rimmer, I would’ve heard!”

Rimmer folded his hands and straightened his back. “Well, fine then, if you don’t believe me. But ask yourself this; if there really was a stark naked, six-breasted, sex crazed alien woman somewhere on board this ship, and you chose to go back to bed rather than to spend a few precious moments exploring the possibility that she might possibly be real…” But Lister had already left the room running.

Lister jogged down the corridor, wondering what the hell he was doing. Rimmer had to be either yanking his chain, or he’d had a dream. It just wasn’t possible. Aliens didn’t exist. Still… A naked, six breasted woman. A woman! The words sang like a mantra through his mind as he rounded corner after corner.

“She didn’t go that way,” a voice sounded suddenly at his rear.

Lister slowed down to a trot, and turned his head. “Rimmer? What the smeg are you doing here?”

Rimmer shrugged, airily. “Oh, you know… Just interested.”

“Well, smeg off! You’ve had yer chance, now it’s my turn.” He increased his tempo slightly, knowing he wouldn’t be able to outrun his bunk-mate for very long, but not caring. It was the principle of the thing.

“Er.” Rimmer said, catching up. “Yes. Well. When I said I’d given her one…”

“Actually, you said _she’d_ given _you_ one,” Lister managed, getting out of breath.

“Alright, whichever! At any rate… I might have been… Exaggerating slightly.”

Lister came to a full stop, which made Rimmer careen into him, knocking them both to the floor, where they sat for a moment, bewildered. “Hold on,” Lister said, finally; “what’s going on here?” He kicked Rimmer’s outstretched leg rather violently, and the other man yelled out in pain.

“Owww! What the hell did you do that for, you vicious little git?”

“To see if I could.”

“What do you mean, to see if you…” Rimmer’s expression froze.

“Yeah, ye get it now, don’t ya?” Lister jeered. “I didn’t question it at first, because I was half asleep; but how on Earth could an alien woman have sex with you? Yer a hologram!” He prodded Rimmer’s foot with his, and the other man flinched. “At least you _were_ a hologram.”

“Oh, well done! That’s that hypothesis tested then! You couldn’t have just shaken my hand, or… I don’t know, patted me manly on the back or something?” He rubbed the spot on his leg where Lister’s boot had impacted.

“’Cause I didn’t want to shake yer hand, I wanted to kick ya in the shin,” Lister said, easily. Ignoring Rimmer’s mumblings about useless gimboids, Lister went on: “So how come ya didn’t notice she was touching you?”

“I _did_ notice! I just didn’t think about it. I had other things on my mind. Six things. Actually.” Rimmer swallowed, and his eyes grew glassy.

Lister rolled his eyes. “So did you have sex with her or not?”

“Er… When you say _sex_ , do you mean… That is…” Rimmer blushed, making the “H” that was inexplicably still stuck to his forehead stand out in even sharper relief.

Lister shook his head, picking himself off the floor. “You didn’t do anything to her, did ya, Rimmer?”

Rimmer’s embarrassment turned to anger. “Not true! That is just not true! She had her hands all over me! She was nibbling; _nibbling_ at my ear-lobes!”

“Yeah,” Lister explained patiently, “but _you_ didn’t do anything to _her_ , did ya?”

Rimmer seemed to calm down. He brushed his trousers down absent-mindedly, and rose. “Well,” he said finally. “Not as such, no.”

Lister sighed, and, as an afterthought, gave Rimmer a very manly pat on the back. “Come on then. Let’s go find us some alien babes.”

“There was only one,” Rimmer mumbled, but he followed Lister along nonetheless.

After a while, the gritty corridor gave way into somewhat swankier surroundings. This, Lister knew, was what was commonly referred to as “Honeymoon Row”; the handful of “couple’s suites” available only to married and co-habiting low-ranking personnel. There hadn’t been many of them on Red Dwarf, so the suites had been constantly subject to more or less successful breaking and entering attempts by amorous crew member who were not exactly in long-term relationships. There were a few reasons the rooms were so popular. Firstly, they had a built-in shower unit, allowing the occupants the luxury of cleaning themselves in privacy, or as much privacy as they preferred; secondly, they were slightly larger, with a lounge-area actually sort of separate from the sleeping area, which contained the third and most popular feature; a sturdy double bed. Chen and Selby had gotten particularly drunk one night, and had found themselves waking up in one the following morning. They had assured Lister, in somewhat subdued voices, that it had been quite comfortable, and large enough that they at no point had, and they wanted to make this absolutely clear, touched at all.

“I’m pretty certain she didn’t actually run in this direction,” Rimmer mumbled for at least the fifth time. Lister ignored him, his hopes of this being anything other than a futile exercise diminishing by the minute. Still, there was the odd matter of Rimmer’s solid body, which they both very pointedly had avoided discussing further. It was just too… Weird. Like the idea of naked, six breasted women suddenly appearing in their quarters, Lister grudgingly admitted to himself.

“Maybe we should start heading back,” he began, turning around to face the currently solid hologram; but as he did so, something green flashed before his eyes, and Rimmer was gone! “Rimmer!” Lister cried, as he only just managed to catch, in the corner of his eye, the door to one of the suites open and close with lightning speed. Not thinking, he threw himself in after whatever it was he had seen.

“Well,” Rimmer said, in a voice rather like that of a newly minted castrato singer, “I don’t want to say ‘I told you so…’”

The hologram was being held, quite firmly, in the arms of what was clearly a naked, green haired woman. Her moss-colored locks flowed down over her shoulders, covering a little of Rimmer, who was clutched to her multiple-bosomed chest, and most of her upper body. They were seated in that fabled double-bed, which Lister now saw for the first time. Considering the display it now featured, the bed itself seemed almost boring and dull, rather than the object of affection it had become among the singles in the crew. Even though the… Woman was seated, it was plain to see that she was taller even than Rimmer; with quite prominent cheek-bones and piercing green eyes set in rather a round sort of face. Long, dark-green lashes fluttered at Lister as he stood, anchored to the floor, staring at a spot somewhere above her right shoulder.

“Are you…” Lister began, then found he had no idea how to finish the sentence. He had been addressing Rimmer, but the woman turned towards him and smiled an otherworldly smile; revealing oddly small, but elegant teeth. Her nipples were green. She opened her mouth, and sounds like multi-voiced choral music poured out, in surprisingly deep tones. She looked pointedly at Rimmer, then Lister. When there was no reply from either man, she repeated the sound, and looked at them both in turn once more.

“Er…” Rimmer swallowed, seemingly locked in the woman’s not too impressive-looking arms. Lister didn’t blame him though; he doubted he’d been able to move in the same position. “She seems to want something.”

Lister didn’t reply; his mind had already made the connection. Once, when he had just turned sixteen, he’d gone to a party at Eddie Nash’s place, the toughest guy in the neighborhood. Ed was famous for two things; the amount of alcohol he could drink and still remain upright, and the number of girls he had slept with. In a respectable third place came the number of people who had peed in their pants when they’d heard he was angry, which is something Lister had, frankly, never envied Ed. In all other respects though, Lister had idolized the older boy. Lister hadn’t believed his luck when Ed had taken him under his wing, given him beer, told him stories, acted like they’d been friends for ages. Quite late in the evening, when they were both drunk out of their skulls, a girl Lister only remembered as “Trish” (he’d sat behind her in biology all through his school years, looking at the rough drawings of female reproductive organs in his books and trying, by holding his books askew, to imagine how they fitted into her body) had locked the three of them into Ed’s bedroom, and the reasons behind Ed’s sudden buddy-buddy attitude had become clear. Trish would only sleep with him if Lister came along too. She’d been absolutely breath-takingly gorgeous; long, black wavy hair, light brown, almost yellow eyes, pale chestnut skin and freckles. She’d been sitting in bed wearing just a pair of frilly pink lace panties, but all Lister could think about was Ed seeing his pale, naked arse (and worse), and he’d panicked, yelling and shouting to be let out of the room. And that had been someone he’d liked; worshipped even; whereas this… He looked at Rimmer, sitting there frozen between two vertical rows of breasts, and swallowed.

“Er…” Rimmer said again, with something of an urgent note. Fear haunted his eyes.

“She wants… I think she wants us both,” Lister managed.

“What?” Insanity pushed fear aside with a violent shove, and Rimmer’s eyes opened – impossibly – even wider.

“Yeah.” What more was there to say? “At the same time… Like.”

“Yes,” Rimmer squealed, “I got that part!” He shook his head from side to side as though trying to pry it loose, but every time he moved it he just bumped into soft, plump half-orbs of decreasing sizes.

“Well??”

”Well?!?!”

Lister said nothing, but his eyes repeated the word yet again in despair. What on Earth were they going to do? What on Earth…

“Maybe…” Rimmer suddenly burst out.

“What?”

Rimmer seemed to swallow. He licked his lips, which seemed, in turn, to attract the attention of the rather impressive woman holding him, and he stopped, abruptly. “I’m just thinking… _Maybe_ … It’d be a good idea if we…”

“Yeah?” Lister held his breath. He’s not going to say it, he told himself; this is _Rimmer_ we’re talking about! There’s no way in smegging hell he’s going to say it.

“If we… Went along with it.” Rimmer’s voice was oddly calm, contrasting starkly with his eyes, which seemed to have gone straight through madness and out the other side. Presumably his vocal chords, simulated or not, simply didn’t know how to deal with his state of mind.

Well. If there was one constant in David Lister’s life, it was this; he was not going to let Arnold bloody Judas Rimmer smegging up-stage him! Not ever. He braced himself, willing his face to look completely deadpan. “All right,” he croaked.

It was rather like a dream, he decided in retrospect, no matter how silly or clichéd that sounded. There was no other word for it. He must have taken his clothes off at some point, because he remembered being more or less naked, save for his boxers, staggering towards the bed feeling like he’d just downed a quart of marijuana gin. Then there had been a tangle of limbs and lips and skin and tongues, with a heavily recurring breast-motif. It should have been awkward and odd, but it wasn’t. Inexplicably, doing this felt as natural as breathing. At first, of course, there had been some shuffling around with regards to who was touching what and whom and how, but they got that sorted out rather quickly. Rimmer’s movements were manic, almost desperate; those of a starving, drowning man. A starving man left on a raft somewhere, suddenly arriving at a utopian desert island filled with self-refrigerated smorgasbords and hordes of nymphomaniac women. His flailing moves were difficult to work around, but Lister was good at adaptation.

The woman’s skin didn’t really feel like anything, other than a bland, milky whiteness; the texture of sterile cotton sheets; the flavor of distilled water. Lister sucked at it anyway, wondering what color any love-bites would be; wondering if he’d have the chance to find out. He was starting to feel oddly excited. He could see Rimmer, on the other side of the creature, his face contorted into all sorts of expressions which might have been funny in another setting, from time to time, as his head rose above the white shoulders. When Lister snaked his arms around to the woman’s front, it would more often than not graze Rimmer’s hand or arm, and he’d quickly pull it away. Nevertheless, it was all a confusing jumble of touch and taste and smell anyway. And somehow, and this was the part he could never quite figure out when reviewing the memory; he’d ended up kissing _Rimmer_ ; touching Rimmer, white-green breasts forgotten, the slick, alien, female body merely a barrier, albeit a lovely one, between them that needed to be overcome.

He remembered tasting salt, sweaty chest and shoulders, nibbling along jawlines, caressing thighs; hands on his buttocks and hot breath in his mouth where eager tongues danced desperately. There had been the faint impression of increased _solidity_ as the barrier between them seemed to vanish into thin air, their bodies touching completely, joyously; underwear being pushed aside, erections gripped, body parts sliding against one another until there was only blissful orgasm and the two of them, lying spent on that infamous bed, clutching one another.

And then Lister had fallen asleep.

The first clue to this was that he woke up. Confusingly, he found himself alone, no white-green alien, no gorgeous git of a bunk mate. He lay back as reality hit him with a sledgehammer. This couldn’t be real. It just couldn’t be. He patted the mattress beneath him, half-hoping it would cease to exist in a puff of un-reality, but no. He sighed. This was just too much to take in. He would rest here for a while, he decided, then figure out what the hell was going on. The bed was, after all, rather comfortable. He was beginning to see what all the fuss was about.

Tumbling out of an air-duct somewhere around the level those weird monkey dudes were hanging out, the Cat stopped dead in his tracks. There was a smell. Or rather, there was an insistent _lack_ of smell, as though someone had sucked all the flavor out of the air with a gigantic vacuum cleaner. He sniffed, somewhat disconcerted. All his instincts were tingling, telling him this was just plain _wrong_. He flattened himself out against the wall of the corridor, ready to attack whatever thing – or lack of thing – was about to appear, but nothing happened. Eventually, the normal, musty smell of long-dead ship returned, and the Cat, forgetting instantly what he’d just been doing, danced happily away, searching for something to investigate.

Lister opened the door to the sleeping quarters with something not entirely unlike dread. Soft, nasal snoring indicated that Rimmer was fast asleep. Hesitating for a moment, Lister swallowed, then nodded to himself, determined. He had to know. Slowly, quietly, he snuck his way up over to the bunks, and leaned down towards Rimmer’s sleeping form, with no real idea of what he was going to say to him if he did manage to wake him up. There just wasn’t a way to put a polite spin on the words “did I just have sex with you?”

“Rimmer…” He whispered.

There was no reply. Leaning down a little further, Lister stuck his hand out to prod Rimmer’s back, and fell backwards in horror and realization as it went straight through the hologram without any resistance whatsoever. A rather loud string of expletives escaped him as he hit the laundry basket, which fell, knocking over several of his own pairs of boots which had been stashed behind it, waking a now confusedly irate Rimmer.

“Oh my _god_ ,” he yelled in hysterics, “there’s an ape in my trousers!”

Whatever Lister had been expecting, it hadn’t been this. “Erm…” he began.

Rimmer, breathing, in as much as he did breathe, heavily, seemed to notice Lister for the first time. “Oh smeg, it’s you again.” He grimaced.

Lister pulled himself off the floor, scratching the back of his head. “Erm…” he repeated. It didn’t sound any better or more intelligent this time.

“I thought you were off looking for that alien vixen I dreamed about?”

“You what?” Lister didn’t like how this was turning out at all.

“Oh, don’t look like that; of course it was a dream! She couldn’t have had sex with me if I was awake, now could she?” He swiped his hand through the side of the bunk as if to prove his point.

Of course. That was the logical explanation. It had all been a dream. He’d wandered off somewhere, gotten into the swanky quarters, fallen asleep… Something sank in Lister, inexplicably. “So why’d you tell me…”

“Because I wanted to get rid of you, you gimboid. Do you’ve any idea how loudly you snore? It’s like sleeping on top of a diesel engine.”

“Underneath,” Lister corrected him automatically, forlornly making his way into the top bunk.

“On top of, underneath, inside; whatever. I just thought it’d be a relief not to have to be reminded of your existence every five damn seconds.” There was a silence, as Rimmer seemed to be satisfied with his tirade. Above him, Lister sighed, thinking of… Well. Apparently nothing.

Apparently.

The pleasure GELF, now too weak to hold on to anything but its default camouflage setting and shape, skulked along the corridors of the ship, feeling satisfied. It had fulfilled its purpose. It had given pleasure. This was good; this was its function. But now it needed to rest; recuperate. Taking on a soft-light holographic form had weakened it substantially, and after that it had been necessary for it to keep two separate shapes at once for rather a long time. This was straining, but the GELF did not complain. It did not know that there might be alternatives to its existence, and so it could be nothing but content.

Instinctively, it searched for the last place it had been when it was safe. The room it had been brought into when the ship picked it up and forced it inside. Yes. This was it. It sensed the right location was near, and gave its equivalent of a sigh; a whole-body, electrical shiver. Sliding unseen into that safe space, it used what little energy it had left to return to the shape which it had held then; the shape which had brought it here. And so, settling down, it slept. It would not be able to change for many hours now. But that was all right. And so, as all creatures do, the pleasure GELF began to dream.

Holly snapped into existence once again in the quarantine room. He was not happy. Gordon Bennet, was someone having him on? Here he was, just finished with his diagnostics, which had taken even longer than usual, as he’d accidentally converted some of the necessary code into a random forgetfulness routine allowing him to enjoy murder-mysteries, and had to re-write it on the fly, and what was the first thing he saw? That bloody pod! Well, he was not having it. Not this hologramatic computer! What did they think he was, some sort of glorified abacus? Raging, he sent all the available scutters into the room to take it away immediately. He watched with some smugness as they carefully guided it into the appropriate air-lock, and pressed the button which would expel it into space. Good. That was another job well done then. Frowning a little, he tried to remember what it was he had been doing before he came in there. He used to be able to be thousands of places at once, in fact, he was pretty sure he still was in more than one room, but things had been going rather slow as of late. He sighed, and decided to start work on some sort of random forgetfulness routine. That would be useful when he wanted to read his collection of murder-mysteries. He wondered why he hadn’t though of doing something like that before?

Three million and some years earlier, Space Corps Biological Engineer Odd Roar Halvorsen watched the GELF spin helplessly into space, changing shapes desperately, trying to find something appropriate for the situation. He hoped it would fare better than he had, in life. At least, he pondered, allowing himself a little smile, it hadn’t been labored with any kind of silly name. He wished it well.


End file.
